[Air-L] A Question About Twitter Suspensions

Tue Apr 20 09:12:41 PDT 2021

Hi Stu,

It’s hard to tell what’s going on without seeing the data. As a rule of thumb you should track the user ID instead of the screen name to make sure which account is actually sourcing the content. The response from the API v1.1 will give you all this info. It’s also possible to get a fairly comprehensive response from Twitter’s v2.0, but it takes some getting used to the new API. We can talk about this when we meet later this week.  

-- 
Marco T. Bastos

Sent from my iPhone. Apologies for brevity and typos. 

> On 20 Apr 2021, at 12:42, Stuart Shulman <stuart.shulman at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> Marco,
> 
> Thank you for the excellent and thought provoking paper. I have been digging into the data and the story is somewhat complex. There are accounts from December 2017 that have the "from_user" showing as suspended, while the same user on the same week generated Tweets that remain live on Twitter today. I have also found live RTs where the "from_user" account is reported as "does not exist" and there are other permutations that seem to defy the logic of account suspensions and account deletions. 
> 
> I hand labeled 1,500 Q-likely Tweets from the December 2017 set as follows:
> 
> Code, Count, Pct.
> Suspended Account, 711, 47.40%
> Deleted Tweet, 509, 33.93%
> Q Signals, 165, 11.00%
> No Sign of Q 115 7.67%
> 
> I have documented this research in the first 7 of the 33 videos here, but I feel there are still many unanswered questions:
> https://vimeo.com/showcase/7543134
> 
> ~Stu
> Dr. Stuart Shulman
> U.S. Soccer Federation C-Licensed Coach 
> (#boycott #thebigsix)
> 
> 
>> On Sun, Apr 4, 2021 at 10:29 AM Marco T Bastos <toledobastos at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi Stu,
>> 
>> Are you checking the usernames or the user IDs?if you’re checking the
>> usernames, chances are the live accounts were recreated after being removed
>> (new user ID, same username). When Twitter removes an account the username
>> is offered again in the pool of available handles, so banned users can
>> create a new account and take over their previous username. Suspension is a
>> bit different and AFAIK it doesn’t remove the username, but you may be
>> coming across a single username that existed over several user IDs. You may
>> find this piece helpful:
>> 
>> https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0002764221989772
>> 
>> HTH,
>> Marco
>> 
>> On Sun, 4 Apr 2021 at 14:48 <air-l-request at listserv.aoir.org> wrote:
>> 
>> >
>> > Date: Sat, 3 Apr 2021 12:05:45 -0400
>> > From: Stuart Shulman <stuart.shulman at gmail.com>
>> > To: "air-l at listserv.aoir.org" <air-l at listserv.aoir.org>
>> > Subject: [Air-L] A Question About Twitter Suspensions
>> > Message-ID:
>> >         <CAJd4SndAuhOoiwVS1W7=
>> > oXjdCgBAzkSinLhPqVfMH3x7TNzq0w at mail.gmail.com>
>> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
>> >
>> > When I try to display Tweets from December 2017 with clear QAnon signals
>> > (hashtags, buzzwords, other markers) many return the message "cannot
>> > display tweet - account is suspended," which makes sense given what we are
>> > living through. However, I then go search for some of those same suspended
>> > Twitter handles and find while some are indeed suspended, others are not
>> > suspended. Some usernames with hundreds of thousands of tweets that go back
>> > to 2011, and were spreading #QAnon, #TheStormIsHere, #WhoIsQ, and
>> > #FollowTheWhiteRabbit and related content between December 8-12, 2017, are
>> > alive and well on Twitter. I have not seen this before and I cannot explain
>> > it. My question is: Can a Twitter account show as suspended for certain
>> > content on the same day it is live with older and more recent content? Have
>> > others encountered this? Can an account suspension be revoked or else
>> > applied to only certain content? One example of many I ran into today: I
>> > have a record of a Q-centric Tweet from a suspended account but the account
>> > itself is in fact live and following current other live Q-related accounts
>> > that also are not suspended. It follows only 72 accounts (a dazzling
>> > collection of Q-related conspiracy experts) but has almost 5,000 heavily
>> > MAGA-leaning followers, which takes a certain Internet dexterity to
>> > achieve. Is there a good paper out there on the legal and procedural
>> > actions related to suspended, semi-suspended, or suspended but then
>> > restored Twitter users?
>> >
>> > Dr. Stuart ShulmanU.S. Soccer Federation C-Licensed Coach
>> >
>> >
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